As Padilla spoke, a moment’s debate with the guard was followed by the appearance of Alburquerque, who conducted the queen dowager into the room. Overcome by emotion, she knelt speechless at her son’s feet, while tears streamed from her eyes. Pedro, in spite of his surprise, rose and received her with the greatest courtesy, but for some moments she was unable to speak. When at last she told him that she knew of his intention to desert his queen for a former love, he affected extreme astonishment, and disclaimed all such intention. “Pedro!” she exclaimed, stung still more deeply by his duplicity, “think not I am so easily deceived. If thou seek’st not to join Maria de Padilla, why does her brother accompany thee? Why does thy courier precede thee to Montalban, where Maria now is? Pedro, how canst thou so easily desert thy queen? Bethink thee, thy court is with thee; the French nobles are still here; Blanche’s friends are around her; the ambassador of the French king is in yon hall. What may not be the consequences of such imprudence? Can such an insult be slightly passed?” Pedro, though very much surprised at the accuracy of her information, was still unshaken, and replied. “Sweet mother! thou mistakest me entirely. My courier went to say that I should not go to Montalban. I am suddenly called from festal joys to meet a traitorous band who have ventured within two days’ march of this fair city and thy home. Come, Garcia, we must to horse. Señor Alburquerque, I leave my mother in thy charge. Disabuse her of her singular fears.” The indignant chancellor vouchsafed no reply to such unmitigated falsehood, but led the weeping and disconsolate dowager to her apartments. Blanche retired early from the feast, and on joining her new mother, her first question was for Pedro. The information which had been acquired by Alburquerque was too precise and certain to admit of doubt; and as the scouts whom he had sent to observe the king’s course, had confirmed it by reporting him as being far on the road to Montalban, it had been decided, perhaps unwisely, to inform Blanche at once. The queen dowager, whose guest Blanche had been since her entrance into Spain, loved her as if she were indeed her daughter, and felt almost as if the relationship were reversed, and Pedro’s course had been the insult of some fickle gallant to her own child.